Nine days ago, I got back from a two week trip to China- while overdue, I'm going to summarize what happened. I won't go into detail, I'm saving those for when I get my journal's back, I'll tell you some things that I didn't include in my journals.
First off, the basics of the trip.
We went to three cities in China-- Xian, Beijing, and Shangahi.
Xian- I thought this city was crap. Located in the west (where only 280 million people live) the city reminded me of an old steel town where there wasn't much to marvel at (All I want to do on trips is marvel at stuff-- that's it). While boasting a population of six million, it seemed like everything was spread out, with no downtown district and a scattering of buildings over 20 stories. This reminded me most of an old Soviet Union city that never modernized. This makes sense because we were visiting Xian (pronounced she-an) to look at the history of China. The Terra Cotta Soldiers were really cool. Other than that, however, I saw no redeeming characteristics of Xian, except the free internet in the room, where I couldn't access any social networking website or my blog. The first morning, I looked up the weather and saw that the forecast was "smoke." By the end of my stay in Xian, I was having trouble dealing with all of the pollution. As I mentioned before, Xian will be covered in disturbing detail once I get back my journals.
Beijing- This was an awesome city. We were here for twice the time as we were in Xian, we had HBO, and the city felt cleaner- supposedly that was because of the Olympics forcing Beijing to clean up its act. Nightlife here was great-- but it felt like I could do so much in this city. Tienanmen Square was eerie. The Olympic village was awesome, however we didn't see the water cube (it was closed) only the bird's next. Great Wall was, well great, and we went on part of the original wall (which didn't have vendors) and took a toboggan ride down to the village. Something about the Great Wall that I didn't know-- it was actually built on mountains. Also, our hotel was running a sex club (not exactly, I may devote an entire post to it later). Anyways, it was very awkward because people heard "noises" in the rooms next door and people were almost denied access to the workout facility because of this den of inequity.
Shanghai- Easily the most modern city on the trip, with a new subway line coming into being every year, Shanghai is a metropolis. It was built mostly around manufacturing, with some really interesting stores. I found my first Uniqulo (kind of like an H&M for Asian people) and a Niketown. There were two other places of note. First was the dumpling restaurant where Yao Ming gets his dumplings- they were super cheap (everything in China is super cheap, but you get what you pay for-- usually) and delicious. The other thing was that two students on the trip in a matter of three days were robbed (with knives) directly outside the hotel. While it didn't have anything to do with the tour we were on, it is a word of advice to those interested in Shangahi-- be safe!
Other than that- the trip to China was interesting (enough to post 3 more posts about it). I'll catch you up on my adventures in Hong Kong soon. Also, I've created a picsa account (it is partnered with blogger) so you can see all of my incredible photos. By incredible, I mainly mean non-existent, because my camera would die whenever something cool was about to happen. With that, I'm going to buy a new camera tomorrow.
Until next time,
-Nick
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